Suggesting interaction among members of a social network

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9489458-B1
Application number	US-201213630642-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	Sep 28, 2012
Priority date	Sep 30, 2011
Publication date	Nov 8, 2016
Grant date	Nov 8, 2016

Abstract

Techniques include receiving a search query; determining a topic related to the search query; identifying, within a specific time following receipt of the search query, one or more members of a social network who are available to interact and who are members of a group relating to the topic; and outputting, for use in augmenting a graphical user interface, data corresponding to information about the one or more members. The data can include data for a link to the group on the social network.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method performed by a server system, comprising:
receiving a search query;
determining a topic related to the search query;
guiding a user who submitted the query into one or more social interactions through a social network, wherein guiding the user comprises:
identifying, within a specific time following receipt of the search query, one or more other users of the social network who are available to interact and who are members of a group relating to the topic of the search query, wherein identifying the other users comprises:
determining a first set of users of the social network who are associated with content relating to the topic of the search query;
determining, from among the users of the first set, a second set of users of the social network who are members of one or more multi-member social groups relating to the topic and hosted by the social network, wherein a multi-member social group comprises a plurality of users that are connected to one another on a social graph associated with the social network, wherein the user who submitted the query has prior social interactions with the users in the second set; and
determining, from among the users of the second set, a third set of users of the social network who are available to interact; and

outputting, for use in augmenting a graphical user interface, data representing one or more suggestions for one or more additional social interactions to occur at a future time with one or more of the identified users with whom the user who submitted the query has previously interacted.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the topic comprises performing a search of a search index using the search query to identify candidate topics relating to the search query; and
selecting, as the topic, a candidate topic that is deemed to have the most relevance to the search query.

3. The method of claim 1 ,
wherein the method further comprises ranking the users of the third set, the data corresponding to information about the identified users comprising a ranked list of the users of the third set.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the search query is received from a first user of the social networking service; and
wherein the users of the third set are ranked based on affinity of the users of the third set to the first user on a social graph of the first user.

5. The method of claim 3 , wherein each of the users of the third set is part of at least one of the groups; and
wherein the users of the third set are ranked based on sizes of corresponding groups.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the data comprises data for a link to the group on the social network.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the search query is a first search query, and the method further comprises:
outputting, for use in augmenting a graphical user interface, data corresponding to a second search query that relates to the first search query.

8. A system comprising:
a data processing apparatus; and
a computer storage medium encoded with a computer program, the program comprising instructions that when executed by the data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:
receiving a search query;
determining a topic related to the search query;
guiding a user who submitted the query into one or more social interactions through a social network, wherein guiding the user comprises:
identifying, within a specific time following receipt of the search query, one or more other users of the social network who are available to interact and who are members of a group relating to the topic of the search query, wherein identifying the other users comprises:
determining a first set of users of the social network who are associated with content relating to the topic of the search query;
determining, from among the users of the first set, a second set of users of the social network who are members of one or more multi-member social groups relating to the topic and hosted by the social network, wherein a multi-member social group comprises a plurality of users that are connected to one another on a social graph associated with the social network, wherein the user who submitted the query has prior social interactions with the users in the second set; and
determining, from among the users of the second set, a third set of users of the social network who are available to interact; and

outputting, for use in augmenting a graphical user interface, data representing one or more suggestions for one or more additional social interactions to occur at a future time with one or more of the identified users with whom the user who submitted the query has previously interacted.

9. One or more non-transitory machine-readable media storing instructions that are executable to perform operations comprising;
receiving a search query;
determining a topic related to the search query;
guiding a user who submitted the query into one or more social interactions through a social network, wherein guiding the user comprises:
identifying, within a specific time following receipt of the search query, one or more other users of the social network who are available to interact and who are members of a group relating to the topic of the search query, wherein identifying the other users comprises:
determining a first set of users of the social network who are associated with content relating to the topic of the search query;
determining, from among the users of the first set, a second set of users of the social network who are members of one or more multi-member social groups relating to the topic and hosted by the social network, wherein a multi-member social group comprises a plurality of users that are connected to one another on a social graph associated with the social network, wherein the user who submitted the query has prior social interactions with the users in the second set; and
determining, from among the users of the second set, a third set of users of the social network who are available to interact; and

outputting, for use in augmenting a graphical user interface, data representing one or more suggestions for one or more additional social interactions to occur at a future time with one or more of the identified users with whom the user who submitted the query has previously interacted.

10. A method performed by one or more computing devices, comprising:
receiving data relating to information about one or more users of a social network; and
generating a graphical user interface to guide a first user into one or more social interactions with the one or more users through the social network, wherein generating a graphical user interface comprises:
augmenting the graphical user interface to include the information about the one or more users of the social network, the augmented graphical user interface comprising:
a field for receiving a first search query;
a first display area for displaying information relating to one or more users of a social network who are available to interact and who are members of a multi-member social group relating to a topic of the first search query and hosted by the social network, wherein a multi-member social group comprises a plurality of users that are connected to one another on a social graph associated with the social network, wherein the first user has prior social interactions with the one or more users of the social network who are available to interact; and
a second display area for displaying a second search query that is related to the first search query, but that is different from the first search query, the second display area comprising a control for initiating a search based on the

Assignees

• Google Inc

Inventors

• Haugen Frances B
• Crichton Daniel M

Classifications

• G06Q10/40

  Business processes related to social networking or social networking services · CPC title

• G06F16/951 Primary

  Indexing; Web crawling techniques · CPC title

• G06F16/9536 Primary

  Search customisation based on social or collaborative filtering · CPC title

• G06F17/30864 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06Q10/48

  using social graphs · CPC title